Ulric was feeling about two parts resignation to three parts relief at that moment. It wasn't just all in his head. Well, it was, but it wasn't just him imagining things. He had, effectively, picked up a strongly territorial instinct. Aggravating. And enlightening. As he had suspected, stats were bullshit and the whole Akashic record thing was a two-way street with no road signs. At no point had Ulric made a conscious decision to become [Forest Lord] 2.0 and, yet, that had sort of just happened, no input required from him, thank you very much. In a similar vein to his objection to having been saddled with Geyrt he was also leashed to the glade and to his own role by a near compulsion to guard it. Were he a paranoid man, he'd start to think Varda itself was making plans for his future. He shook off that whimsical thought, which was too far-fetched even for this fairy tale land. What wasn't in doubt was the need to get the impulses under wraps, to dominate them before they dominated him.
He recalled the immense frustration when he had been unable to continue the hunt for those bastards roaming around up in the canopy, whatever they were doing up there. Logically, intellectually, he knew it was for the best to come back to Irielhos. It was for his own good and the greater good of his new allies to escort the wounded soldier home and to report their findings, rather than go in guns blazing and probably walk into an ambush, of men or monsters or both. It was the smart play, and he was glad he'd done it. But he felt the itch down his back to head out immediately and go find the trespassers.
The instinct had been so powerful that, for a moment, he'd considered leaving out immediately with Geyrt to hunt those dickwads down, leaving Christ and the other Elves to figure out getting Darla back themselves. Utterly selfish, and completely shortsighted, that would have been. However, every time he thought about the glade the nagging feeling came back. Generally speaking, it put him in a sort of pissy mood if he couldn't distract himself.
Add in all the tired from their race to save Darla and, just right now, Ulric was not a happy dude.
Bald'rt, wise in the ways of the world as he was, was plainly aware of Ulric's state of mind.
"This comes as news to you, not entirely welcome, at that, I see. It is unfortunate that I cannot offer any greater consolation to you than this Ulric: you will adjust. Matters are not helped that you have driven yourself to exhaustion, bodily and magically, in your celerity to return. I am grateful for this sacrifice on your part. If it helps, know that it was not for nothing, the labor and innovations you made to speed my warrior home." the grateful Chief of Iriel told him.
"Just before you arrived, I was given word that the healers are confident that Darla will make a complete recovery. They were equally confident that his leg would not have been salvageable had not he arrived so quickly, and that he would never have swung sword or pulled bow, had not you brought him to aid with such haste. Thank you, again, friend of my kin." Thanked the Elven Lord.
It made Ulric slightly uncomfortable, the obvious gratitude of the normally so flippant and casual Iriel'en King. He'd gotten one of those men killed by being there. That was not, evidently, how the Iriel'en saw things. Even so, he didn't want to linger under the Elven King's attention, he wanted, more than anything to be by himself, to find a quiet space to just be for a bit. Ulric's goose was, metaphorically, cooked.
Before he could bow himself out with a lack of grace though, he was saved from an unlikely quarter.
"My Honor is weary, Lord Iriel, Father. It has been a long road. I would put this audience at an end, for now, until Ulric has had time to recover from the ordeal. There will be time on the morrow to make plans for the future, now that the immediate threats are outlined." Prompted Geyrt from behind him.
Ulric was a little surprised, she was in a generous mood was his Shadow. Especially given that she had to be suffering at least a little, the woman had traveled farther than anyone else, by far, during their expedition, and had proven a pillar of security on which the rest of her kin had greatly relied. In spite of a few, er, mishaps with forgetting a possibly crucial spell that might have saved some effort, Ulric realized that it was highly likely the group would have been doomed without her aid. As awkward as the girl was around other people, out in the wilderness, she was a savant. Ulric was actually glad to have her following him around, at that moment.
Bald'rt nodded his agreement with his daughter and bid Ulric rest and recuperate before attending a "strategy supper", his words, not Ulric's, next evening.
Of the march back to his borrowed apartments, Ulric remembered nothing but a profound feeling of indebtedness towards these people who sheltered him, right up until his face hit a feather pillow and sleep claimed him. When next he gained awareness it was due to the light of the Twins spilling into his room.
A loud yawn punctuated a joint cracking stretch as Ulric came awake. Muscles worn by use the previous day protested briefly before bowing to the inevitable. He was laying on top of his blankets, in the buff, with his armor and clothes scattered in a trail from door to bed. He had no recollection of entering the room. Still cramped, he made a point to do a few repetitions of his morning stretch from his seat on the bed, his back pressed firmly against the wooden headboard. Slowly, the muscle stiffness in his back and shoulders broke loose and he sighed with relief, staring at the far wall of his room.
For a few moments Ulric just…was. No thought, no worries, no memories, just a silent appreciation for the golden light that gilded the wooden floors and cast sharp reliefs onto the masterful carvings that embellished most all of the walls, ceilings, and furniture. The artistry was immensely peaceful, calming. Beautific natural themes settled Ulric's mind and he sort of drifted for an unknown count of minutes. Eventually, though, he came back to himself. There was business to attend.
With a heavy sigh, Ulric accepted that he was going to have to get his ass in gear. First things first, he made for the privy. As a shiver of relief poured through him he realized that he hadn't taken a shit since returning. His eyes widened when he recalled the spicy stew. Oh dear. That might be a problem. "I am so, so sorry future me." Ulric told the room.
Shaking his head at the inevitable, Ulric padded back to his bed side and began a series of stretches shown him by Christ and the other royal guards during their daily training with Idra'se. The methodical stretch of hamstrings, achilles, tibialis muscles, back, and trunk helped greatly to open his body up to the rigors of the exercises. They also felt pretty good, once you got used to them. His reforged body had the limberness of a child's body, he could bend over to lay his chest against his knees and palm the floor, which he did, holding the position for ten short breaths before bending backwards to arch his spine in a bridge, feet and hands flat for the same set of breaths.
With an easy flex of his core and a shifting of his weight to his hands, Ulric transitioned to a vertical handstand. Fifty handstand pushups, then he lowered his legs to rest on the bed, near enough to a forty-five-degree angle, and did fifty more pushups, and, lastly, he rested his feet on the floor and did his final fifty in a horizontal diamond hand position that put more stress on his triceps than his shoulders.
Variety was good in bodywork, it forced the muscles and joints to coordinate differently. Flexibility was imperative to building real strength without creating fail points that would cause injury. Such was the philosophy of Idra and Ulric was a believer. The master swordsman moved like he had no bones.
Warm-up complete, Ulric ran through the prescribed balance exercise that he had been unable to complete during the hectic rush back from his home in the glade. Events had made the luxury of a workout routine impossible. Light perspiration beaded his forehead by the time the tenth repetition was complete and he felt the inner warmth that accompanied his morning routine.
The almost meditative nature of the exercise helped clear his head and put him in a good place mentally, a positive starting point from which to attack the challenges of the day. And there would be challenges. As much as he hated to rile up the Lord Instinct, as Bald'rt had called it, he couldn't help but think what might be done to penetrate the veil of magical cover those men were using to traverse the canopy. On the same topic of note, he needed to develop his own magical cover, a way to deny remote scrying of his position or even general location.
If he could figure out how the spells were anchored, he was pretty sure he could finagle a way to become "slippery" so that such attempts would find no purchase on him. Creating an area denial ran into the problem that a clever mage would realize that there were specific locations denied them and then he might as well have put a huge "Here I am!" flag on his back. Better to sort of just mirror the magical imprint of his location, absent whatever mana signature the spell used to locate him, reporting no presence like hacking a security camera to show an empty room. There was the tiny problem of not knowing how to do that, but if Geyrt could use her [Hunter's Mark] on him a couple of times he was pretty sure he could find a way to figure out how those spells worked and spoof them.
The next problem was one of equipment. His bone plate lorica was a godsend. It had literally saved his life, on more than one occasion, and he was convinced that whatever prehistoric armorer had designed the segmentata, they had been a genius. Despite Ulric's relative lack of skill and tooling, he'd managed a simulacrum of the old Roman design that was nigh impenetrable by the beasts and weapons he'd encountered. His weapon, on the other hand, was a disaster.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
The too-long metal trident had twice proved unwieldy for his frame, he simply wasn't large enough a man to use it as it was intended. Attacking monsters, especially of the sort of agile groups like the [Heckler Monkeys] and [Polar Weasels], had proved too easily capable of getting inside the range of the bladed tines of his weapon. They had forced him into a close-quarters fight without much use of the instrument occupying both his hands.
At the ranges the trident was best used, he would honestly have been better off just using his powerful array of mid-range offensive spellwork. [Cinder Pearl], [Water Jet], [Flame Crash], and any of his Ceraun spells would have served him better in his last fight. If not for that magic, Geyrt would have been mauled, probably badly, having left her back unguarded to kill the monster off his legs. That thing would have gotten to the insides of his thighs and opened a femoral artery before he could get out from under the one on his chest. The thought sent a small roil through his guts. Too close, had it been, too close by far.
So, the trident had to go. He wasn't sure what to replace it with, he was, a neophyte when it came to melee combat. At no point in his old life had he ever considered he'd find himself fending off howling monsters with nothing but a spear or dagger, but here he was. A spear, appropriately sized and with less clumsy a business district than the very specifically purposed trident head, would be a good choice. Spears had been the most fundamental weapon of humanity throughout antiquity, after all.
Problem was, a spear really only did one thing, put a hole in a single target and required both hands to be used effectively. It didn't have any offensive potential beyond that and Ulric was three times shy now of having both of his hands tied up holding a pole between himself and sharp teeth. Ulric sat naked on his bed, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling while he mulled the problem over.
No spears, too clunky, too limited. A bow? Almost certainly the best option at range, once he found time to replace the one he'd gifted his Shadow. That had been a good decision, for multiple reasons, it turned out. For one it had made her happy, and for another, the weapon made his already formidable Shadow a truly fearsome opponent. She had proven to be a much better handler of his bow than he ever would be. She'd saved both his and Darla's lives with it, and Ulric regretted that decision not at all. But, even if he replaced that bow with another of equivalent power, it still didn't solve the problem of what he would do were he ambushed from close range again. He needed a melee option, and not a spear.
No, he was leaning more heavily on a bladed weapon, an axe, or a sword. Not to toot his own horn but he was strong and fast, gods-given gifts that he had honed greatly in his days of savagery in the glade. Idra's training regimen was adding to those foundations. A largish sword, perhaps of the bastard variety, would be something that could be used in one hand or two and not greatly lose effectiveness, which would allow him to take advantage of his greatest advantage: magic.
Ulric wasn't under the illusion that he would be a master swordsman any time in the near future. But what he could do is buy space, make an enemy leery of getting too close with a big sharp blade between him and whatever threat he faced, which would create openings to blast them to smithereens. One of the bastards he'd killed saving Brighteyes had called him a spellsword, and that was what he intended to be. Which meant it was finally time to go see a smith and get some options.
Ulric dressed from one of the sets of clothes that had been provided in the wardrobe occupying one corner of his apartment. Those masterful artisans of the domestic had, somehow, provided an assortment of fitted suites and robes. He had no idea how they'd obtained his measurements and he wasn't willing to go down the rabbit hole of wondering at their methods. Just accept that the Duties were all-powerful and all-knowing and move on with life.
Close-fitting cotton-ish underclothes, of a dark grey went on first, a rather efficient affair that resembled a tank top and athletic short onesie. It had ties across the body to cinch it up tightly. On top of that, Ulric chose the thin silk long-sleeved shirt and stout canvas pants, both in some kind of muted green. After he'd tucked in the shirt so it could hang loosely and grant his arms and shoulders freedom, he put on his old leather belt with its companion knife sheath, handle of said knife jutting proudly from his hip. Over the rest, Ulric put on a thick woolen robe that fell to his calves. Its jet-black color was accented by vibrant green scrolling vines, with small flowers here in there, embroidered in a deep red. It was, likely, the best dressed he'd ever been in either of his lives. That said something for his attitude on fashion in his previous life, which hadn't changed greatly, but had evolved to at least appreciate how much effort and skill went into the production of this finery. Knowing that these clothes had all been made by hand, from fibers painstakingly woven from their sources without access to industrial machinery, and tailored specifically for him was humbling. He didn't deserve such treatment, and he would wear these with gratitude.
At some point, Geyrt must have heard him stirring around. A set of three loud knocks drew his attention from the wonders of the Elven artisans and the consideration of his hosts.
"Enter, Geyrt, and good morning." Ulric called to his door.
The heavy door to the interior rooms opened soundlessly. In strode athletic desire made flesh, looking far less ragged than she had the previous day. A good night's sleep had done wonders, those dark rims under her eyes were gone and her stride had regained its usual vigor. He wasn't the only one run down from the pace of events in the glade. Today should be a welcome departure from their hectic race. Geyrt was dressed for business but not war today, wearing those heavy robes and loose trousers she preferred for casual affairs in the citadel. Today's colors favored whites and greens.
A few strides into the room and she seemed to take notice of him for the first time. She stopped short and frowned slightly, expression neutral. Her ears, normally a giveaway when she was particularly excited or bothered were still. Emerald-flecked bronze eyes dissected him as she took an overly long moment to look him over, absent any spoken word. As accustomed to her oddities as he was becoming, she still had a way of throwing him off without trying. Getting a wordless visual inspection, as if checking him over for lice, first thing in the morning was another way she accomplished her seeming goal of disturbing Ulric's peace. Gods what he would not do to get a look at what was going on behind those eyes.
Eventually, she must have found what she was looking for, she nodded to herself and strode to stand before him.
"Good morning, Ulric, I am glad that you have decided to finally dress your station. Too often you seem to ignore your status as a visiting Lord and dress the way a lowly warrior recruit would." Said his Shadow, her tone only lightly admonishing.
In fact, if Ulric wasn't completely mistaken the woman sounded very nearly pleased.
"Your choices were appropriate, it is good that I will not have to teach you how to clothe yourself. Now, perhaps, you will not embarrass the both of us publicly." She continued.
Ahh…Geyrt, never change.
Ulric chose to take the exchange in whatever spirit made his life easiest.
"Thank you for your approval, Shadow, it is well that you won't need to dress me. I seem to be bad at it, poor Hal'et tried her best and the clothes just seemed to always return to the floor." Ulric said lightly.
That got a roll of eyes and a slight toss of her braid, which was enough to bring a smile to Ulric's mouth.
"All jesting aside, I am glad you approve Geyrt. I have to give credit where it belongs though, the Duties are incredible. Everything was fitted and tailored exactly even without measurements taken. I have no idea how they pulled that off but they're miracle workers." Ulric said, thoroughly impressed.
Geyrt, mollified somewhat, dropped a small bomb on him.
"They measured you while you slept your second night, Glade Chief, so that they could begin preparing suitable garments. It was friend Hal'et's suggestion, you seemed too…exhausted…to bother waking for the task." Said the woman, a small smile finding its way to her face.
Oof. Touche' lass. Ulric gave her a couple of brief finger guns, to let her know she had won the exchange. She brushed a small bit of nonexistent dust off her shoulder to acknowledge her victory. Similar exchanges were somewhat commonplace these days. Jab and riposte, first blood takes the victory.
"If there's nothing more pressing for the morning, I was thinking of seeing a weaponsmith Geyrt. Any recommendations?" He asked, turning his mind back to serious business.
The Elf woman chewed her lip briefly as she considered, no longer nonplussed by his sudden switches in train of thought.
"It is difficult, Glade Chief, most of the smiths are occupied with commissions from the Crown, on behalf of preparations for what is most certainly to be open warfare in the spring. That said, there is one name that comes to mind: Galed Uldin.”
She smiled as if she had thought of something funny, so brief he might have imagined it, except that he hadn’t. Good humor was rare enough on her features to stand out.
His Shadow spoke evenly, as if not to get Ulric’s hopes up. Her hands gestured ambiguously, to emphasize the uncertainty of this line of action.
“He is, technically, retired, but accepts commissions from time to time on any projects he feels might prove interesting. Your oddly effective armor, and its unique composition would definitely catch his eye. He might be tempted into some work for an outsider if he were able to examine your armor and some of the materials from the glade." She answered at last.
That was all? Deal. Gifted artisans were always a little odd. He'd known a machinist that could make any part you wanted to tolerances of micrometers, with only a description and a picture of the location in the device in which it would be placed. He could do the rest in his own head. But he wouldn't touch the thing until you brought him coffee and donuts personally; the odd man considered it a common courtesy between professionals. And those better not be mass-marketed donuts either. Fresh bakery product, glazed, don't you dare taint them with sprinkles or you were never getting those parts.
"Is that all!? Done, and done!" Ulric exclaimed.
This was something he'd awaited for over a month, ever since he'd met Brighteyes. The chance to see an Elven artisan work their craft, turn raw material into artful purpose. Ulric was almost giddy. Hurrying around the room he grabbed a few [Steelwood] poles, lashing them together with hide laces from his pack. Next, he stuffed his armor into the woven bark basket and looped its handles over the poles, before emptying his pack of survival gear to fill it with various odds and ends, such as glassresin sheets, a cylinder of horn glue, a whole [Bladefern Elk] antler, braided tendon cords, and some handwidth strips of [Forest Lord] leather. Lastly, to his Shadow's bemusement, he stuffed her arms with a couple of [Forest Lord] bones, a rib, a femur, and a scapula, to be specific, along with his great metal trident before filling his own hands with his large cookpot laden with the cores of various creatures, [Bolt Deer], [Bladefern Elk], [Golden Heckler Monkey], [Fell Wolf], and others, their jeweled crystalline facets throwing refracted light of varying hues.
"Let's go Geyrt, let's go! We've got places to be and people to see!" trilled Ulric happily.
The Elven Huntress stared at the man who held the reins to her future with amazement. Gone was his easily broken attempt at reserved dignity, he was almost bouncing as he chivvied her out of the room, with the cookpot of chiming cores. She squawked slightly at his insistent pushes out of the room but didn't complain, his giddy enthusiasm being infectious. It reminded her of her brother when he was enraptured with some diversion or other. Instead of goading him she maintained her quiet calm and followed as quickly as she could, arms full of awkward payload that shifted as she matched her worms in the head Honor's pace. The man was very nearly skipping down the hall.
Unbelievable.
He halted abruptly at the end of the hall, woven bag swinging wildly from its pole at the sudden stop. Turning, he admitted sheepishly, "Ah…I don't know how to get there. Perhaps, Geyrt, you would take the lead?"
She restrained a smile, "Of course, Ulric, it is my duty. Let us see what services Master Uldin has to offer." Geyrt said with a measured voice.
"Follow me, Glade Chief." And, securing more firmly the items he'd foisted off on her, she set off down the opposite direction, back the way they had come, to lead her Honor to the home and smithy of a most renowned, and absurdly finicky, blacksmith.
Ulric followed, his eyes barely seeing her back for the distracted thoughts racing through his mind. They were off to see a smith! A magical smith, with magical tools, who could make who the hell knows what kind of bullshit artifacts!